Two experiments investigated why preschool children sometimes produce multiple words of a referent, but other times allow only on word. In the first experiment, 3- and 4-year-old children completed a naming task. Children produced on average more than two words per object. In the second, 3- and 4-year-olds learned new words for nameable objects.…

Discusses syntactic optionality, the coexistence within an individual grammar of two or more variants of a given construction that make use of the same lexical resources and express the same meaning. Focus is on syntactic optionality in second language grammars. (Author/VWL)

Examined input frequency, sentence position, and duration as contributing factors to grammatical inflections. In parents' conversations with and stories aimed at young children, noun plural inflections were more frequent than third singular verb inflections, especially in sentence-final position. Analysis of four mothers' speech when reading…

Investigated young children's learning of the correct use of first and second person pronouns, using feed-forward neural networks. The study involved four computer simulations using the cascade-correlation (CC) learning algorithm. Results indicated that the CC networks could produce the correct pronouns without errors if children heard pronouns…

Investigated young blind children's use of pronouns, following blind and sighted children longitudinally and analyzing every spatial deictic term and personal reference term they used (noting reversal errors). Results indicated that blind children began to use personal reference terms as early as sighted children, and use of reversals was not…

In a series of production and grammaticality judgment experiments, I investigated the status of children's non-adult questions with 2 auxiliary verbs, such as "What did the smurf didn't buy." Previous studies showed that these questions were produced primarily in negative contexts. In the first part of the study, I tested whether children produce…

We study the ability of children to provide an appropriate continuation for a stimulus sentence, taking into account the joint demands of situational aspect and grammatical aspect. We hypothesize that the aspectual transitions required by some aspectual combinations play a role in the difficulty of providing an appropriate continuation for them.…

The nature and origin of the human capacity for acquiring language is not yet fully understood. Here we uncover early roots of this capacity by demonstrating that humans are born with a preference for listening to speech. Human neonates adjusted their high amplitude sucking to preferentially listen to speech, compared with complex non-speech…

Our previous research showed that Russian children commit fewer gender-agreement errors with diminutive nouns than with their simplex counterparts. Experiment 1 replicates this finding with Russian children (N=24, mean 3;7, range 2;10-4;6). Gender agreement was recorded from adjective usage as children described animal pictures given just their…

This work aims to analyse the specific contribution of social abilities (here considered as the capacity for attributing knowledge to others) in a particular communicative context. 74 normally developing children (aged 3;4 to 5;9, M=4.6) were given two Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks, which are considered to assess increasing complexity levels of…

Eighteen-month-olds' spatial categorization was tested when hearing a novel spatial word. Infants formed an abstract categorical representation of support (i.e., placing 1 object on another) when hearing a novel spatial particle during habituation but not when viewing the events in silence. Infants with a productive spatial vocabulary did not…

When children learn language, they apply their language-learning skills to the linguistic input they receive. But what happens if children are not exposed to input from a conventional language? Do they engage their language-learning skills nonetheless, applying them to whatever unconventional input they have? We address this question by examining…

Numerous studies show that children's language ability is related to false-belief understanding. However, there is considerable variation in the size of the correlation reported. Using data from 104 studies (N=8,891), this meta-analysis determines the strength of the relation in children under age 7 and examines moderators that may account for the…

Purpose: This exploratory study examined the feasibility of homeless parents' participation in an intervention to increase use of facilitating language strategies during interactions with their preschool children while residing in family homeless shelters. This study also examined the intervention's impact on the parents' use of facilitating…

Japanese provides a valuable contrast for crosslinguistic studies of noun and verb dominance in early child language, and the effect of input on the early lexicon. In this study, 31 Japanese children between 1;0 and 2;0 and their caregivers were recorded in two contexts: joint bookreading and play with toys. Context had the largest effect, as…